Microsoft Analysis Services, MDX, DAX, Power Pivot, Power Query and Power BI

Category: Azure Analysis Services

When Azure Analysis Services was announced I had to try it out right away. Of course I didn’t read the instructions properly so when I tried to log in to my Azure Analysis Services instance from SQL Server Management Studio, like an idiot I logged in with the wrong username. The problem is that once you’ve done this, with current versions of SQL Server Management Studio there’s no way of logging out and logging in as a different user. Luckily Igor Uzhviev of Microsoft had a solution for me and I thought I’d share it for anyone else who’s made the same mistake. Here’s what you need to do:

Go to your user local app data folder (the path is like this: C:\Users\<your_user_name>\AppData\Local\)

In this directory you need to delete: 1) Any .dat files with names that start with "omlibs-tokens-cache…" 2) The folder AADCacheOM, if it exists

You also need to open Internet Explorer and delete all cookies and website data, because IE caches auth tokens too

Once you’ve done this, the next time you try to connect to Azure Analysis Services from SSMS you’ll get prompted to log in again. Future releases of SSMS will have proper support for logging in and out of Azure SSAS, but even with the latest version (version 16.5) you’ll still need to following these steps.

It’s still in preview, so while there are some missing features I’m confident that they’ll be added soon. Similarly it’s SSAS Tabular only right now, but the blog post says

Support for multidimensional models will be considered for a future release, based on customer demand.

I’m pretty sure there there will be plenty of demand for Multidimensional support given the installed base that’s out there.

Why should we be excited about this, though? What will Azure Analysis Services be useful for? Obviously, if you want to build a completely cloud-based Microsoft BI solution then Azure SSAS is an important component to have available. Also, consider the fact that the load on a typical SSAS server varies a lot over time: daytime is usually much busier than night-time, weekdays are usually busier than weekends, and some days of the month (such as month ends) may be much busier than others. It will be great to be able to build cloud-based SSAS solutions that can be scaled-up and scaled-down to meet demand, rather than expensive on-premises SSAS solutions that are underutilised most of the time. I also think Azure SSAS will be very interesting to ISVs, and to Power BI users looking to move up from native Power BI storage, although in both cases pricing will be key to adoption. I can’t wait to start using this with my customers!

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As well as being a blogger, I'm an independent consultant specialising in Analysis Services, MDX, DAX, Power BI, Power Query and Power Pivot. I work with customers from all round the world solving design problems, performance tuning queries and delivering training courses, and I am happy to work on short-term engagements. For more details see http://www.crossjoin.co.uk